The present invention relates to a semiconductor device and an electronic instrument.
In recent years, a high-speed serial transfer such as low voltage differential signaling (LVDS) has attracted attention as an interface aiming at reducing EMI noise or the like. In such a high-speed serial transfer, data is transferred by causing a transmitter circuit to transmit serialized data using differential signals and causing a receiver circuit to differentially amplify the differential signals (JP-A-2001-222249).
An ordinary portable telephone includes a first instrument section provided with buttons for inputting a telephone number or characters, a second instrument section provided with a liquid crystal display (LCD) or a camera device, and a connection section (e.g. hinge) which connects the first and second instrument sections. Therefore, the number of interconnects passing through the connection section can be reduced by transferring data between a first circuit board provided in the first instrument section and a second circuit board provided in the second instrument section by serial transfer using small-amplitude differential signals.
In order to realize the high-speed serial transfer in a portable telephone or the like, it is necessary to provide a high-speed serial transfer transmitter circuit or the like in a baseband engine/application processor (BBE/APP) or an image processing controller and provide a high-speed serial transfer receiver circuit or the like in a display driver.
The high-speed serial transfer transmitter circuit or receiver circuit is formed by an analog circuit. Therefore, the analog characteristics change when the manufacturing process has been changed, thereby making it necessary to redesign the circuit. On the other hand, it is necessary to positively employ a microfabrication process for the BBE/APP, image processing controller, or display driver in order to reduce cost. Therefore, the high-speed serial transfer transmitter circuit or receiver circuit must be unnecessarily redesigned when reducing the chip size of the BBE/APP, image processing controller, or display driver using the microfabrication process, whereby the design period may be increased.